Data for: Too much and too fast? Public investment scaling-up and absorptive capacity

Abstract of associated article: A recent trend in several low-income developing countries has been a rapid scaling-up of public investment. It is argued that in the presence of limited absorptive capacity countries are not able – in terms of skills, institutions, and management – to translate additional public investment into sustained output growth. We test for the presence of absorptive capacity constraints using a large dataset of World Bank investment projects, approved between 1970 and 2007 in 80 countries. Our results indicate that projects undertaken in periods of public investment scaling-up are less likely to be successful, although this effect is relatively small, especially in poor and capital scarce countries. We also verify that this effect is unrelated to large aid flows and donor fragmentation.关联研究论文摘要：近年来，多个低收入发展中国家呈现出公共投资快速扩容的趋势。有观点认为，当吸纳能力（absorptive capacity）有限时，各国在技能、制度与管理层面均无法将新增公共投资转化为可持续的产出增长。我们采用1970年至2007年间80个国家获批的世界银行（World Bank）投资项目大型数据集，对吸纳能力约束的存在性展开检验。研究结果显示，公共投资扩容阶段实施的项目成功率相对更低，尽管这一效应的幅度整体较小，在贫困且资本稀缺的国家中尤为明显。此外我们还验证了，该效应与大规模援助流入及援助方分散化并无关联。